Failed Integration, Alienation and the Rise of Homegrown Violent Islamist Extremism in Sweden
An institutional framework for analyzing Sweden’s terrorism prevention policy and practice
Morteza Eslahchi
Master’s Thesis in International Relations Department of Economic History
Stockholm University
Supervisor: Dr. Jonathan M. Feldman August 2017
Keywords: Islamic State (IS), Terrorism, Counter-terrorism, Terrorism Prevention, Violent Islamist Extremism, Alienation, Social Inclusion, Sweden
Abstract
In this thesis, I try to analyze how Sweden prevents violent Islamist extremism. First, by using alienation and network theories I explain how various socio-economic factors create an alienating environment in which individuals who have inappropriate social network can move towards violent Islamist extremism. Second, by analyzing the policy and practice of preventive work with a focus on activities of the National Coordinator Against Violent Extremism I try to identify achievements and shortcomings in this area, and eventually suggest how preventive work in Sweden can be improved.
Acknowledgments
Working full time and writing a master’s thesis at the same time wasn’t an easy task, and I’m extremely happy and relieved that I survived it. Words are unable to express my gratitude to my beloved wife Somayeh, whose presence in my life is the main driving force for me. I would like to acknowledge that this thesis wouldn’t be done without the advice and intellectual support of my supervisor Dr. Jonathan Feldman who patiently guided me through the process. Last but not least, I’m very grateful to staff at the National Coordinator Against Violent Extremism for their unconditional help.
Table of Contents
Abstract ... 1
Acknowledgments ... 2
List of Tables and Figures ... 5
Tables ... 5
Figures... 5
1. Introduction ... 6
1.1 Research problem and Research Questions ... 6
1.2 The Importance of Study: Stagnation in Terrorism Research ... 7
2. Background ... 9
2.1 9/11 and War on Terror ... 9
2.2 Counter-terrorism in the EU ... 11
3. Theoretical framework and Literature Review ... 13
3.1 Introduction ... 13
3.2 Root Causes of Terrorism ... 13
3.3 Alienation and Dealienation: A Comprehensive Framework to Analyze Violent Islamist Extremism ... 15
3.3.1 Alienation and Electoral Turnout ... 17
3.4 Network Theory ... 18
3.5 Swedish IS fighters ... 19
3.5.1 Age and Gender Distribution ... 21
3.5.2 The average years of living in Sweden ... 21
3.5.3 Crime Background ... 22
3.5.4 Geographical distribution ... 22
3.5.5 Recruited by Family Members and Friends ... 23
3.6 Summary ... 24
4. Methodology ... 25
4.1 Levels of Analysis ... 25
4.2 Statistical Analysis ... 26
4.3 Content Analysis ... 27
4.4 Questionnaire ... 28
5. Particularly Exposed Areas: Daily Life as a Process of Alienation ... 30
5.1 Introduction ... 30
5.2 Unemployment ... 31
5.3 Education ... 33
5.4 Annual Income ... 34
5.5 Electoral Turnout ... 35
5.6 Summary ... 36
6. A Gradual Progression of Policy and Strategy Design ... 38
6.1 Introduction ... 38
6.2 The Earlier Strategy Inspired by the EU Framework ... 39
6.3 From Counterterrorism to Preventing Terrorism ... 40
6.4 The New Strategy ... 42
6.5 Summary ... 44
7. Prevention in Practice: The National Coordinator Against Violent Extremism ... 45
7.1 Introduction ... 45
7.2 Coordinating Municipalities’ Activities ... 47
7.2.1 Situational Awareness ... 47
7.2.2 Action Plan ... 48
7.2.3 Knowledge Centers ... 48
7.2.4 Reference Group ... 49
7.2.4 To What extent has the National Coordinator been successful? ... 50
7.3 Shortcomings ... 50
7.3.1 Root Causes ... 52
7.3.2 Role of Civil Society ... 53
7.3.3 Surveillance ... 54
7.4 Summary ... 55
8. Conclusion ... 56
Theoretical and Empirical Findings ... 56
Limitations and Suggestions for future Research ... 57
Bibliography ... 58
Books, Chapters in Books and Articles ... 58
Documents ... 62
Databases ... 64
Appendix ... 65
The questionnaire form ... 65
List of Tables and Figures
Tables
Table 1: Four cities contributing most to IS fighters ... 23
Table 2: The theoretical framework of the study ... 26
Table 3: Selected documents ... 28
Table 4: 15 Particularly Exposed Areas in Sweden ... 30
Table 5: Population with foreign background 2016 ... 31
Table 6: Unemployment rate between native Swedes vs. foreign born 2016 ... 32
Table 7: Unemployment 2016 ... 32
Table 8: Education level 2016 ... 33
Table 9: Annual incomes 2016 ... 34
Table 10: Electoral Turnout in 2014 Parliament election ... 35
Table 11: Four pillars of EU counter-terrorism strategy ... 39
Table 12: Objectives of Preventive work in Sweden’s counter-terrorism strategy ... 43
Figures Figure 1: The age distribution at time of first travel to Syria/Iraq ... 21
Figure 2: The age distribution of IS foreign fighters when immigrating to Sweden ... 22
Figure 3: The amount of Swedish IS fighters from different counties ... 23
Figure 4: The multilayered process of engaging in violent Islamist extremism ... 24
Figure 5: How important is lack of meaningful employment in tendency towards violent Islamist Extremism? ... 33
Figure 6: How important is low education level in tendency towards violent Islamist Extremism? ... 34
Figure 7: How important is low incomes rate in tendency towards violent Islamist Extremism? ... 35
Figure 8: How important is sense of non-belonging to society in the tendency towards violent Islamist Extremism? ... 36
Figure 9: To what extent has the National Coordinator been successful? ... 50
Figure 10: How successful has Sweden been in preventing violent Islamist extremism? ... 51
Figure 11: How successful has Sweden been in creating equal opportunity for people with foreign background? ... 52
Figure 12: How successful Sweden has been in social integration of people with foreign background into the society? ... 53
Figure 13: Can Civil Society help limit or prevent violent Islamist extremism? ... 53
Figure 14: How effective can the Islamic community be in helping to limit or prevent violent Islamist extremism? ... 54
Figure 15: What do you think the effect of more surveillance in areas with intense Muslim population will be? ... 54
1. Introduction
1.1 Research problem and Research Questions
According to Sweden’s security service (SÄPO), the country’s contribution to Islamic State’s (IS) foreign fighters has been around 300 individuals (SÄPO, 2016). In per capita terms, Sweden ranks the third place in the number of such fighters after Belgium and Austria among EU member states in this matter (Van Ginkel, B., and E. Entenmann, 2016) demonstrating serious flaws in Sweden’s counter-terrorism and terrorism prevention policy and practice.
Analyzing all aspects of the situation and offering comprehensive and concrete solutions for how to prevent terrorism and violent Islamist extremism is of course beyond the scope of a master’s thesis, however, since the number of academic pieces about the topic in Sweden is relatively low all the efforts can be useful.
Distinguishing counter-terrorism and terrorism prevention from one another, in this thesis I will only focus on terrorism prevention policy and practice in Sweden because compared to counter-terrorism it’s not well discussed. Counter-terrorism means those activities and operations conducted mainly by the police, intelligence and security agencies and judiciary in order to neutralize terrorists, while terrorism prevention is about more comprehensive actions, initiatives, and programs to tackle root causes and structural settings that can create environment in which individuals can turn towards terrorism and violent extremism (OSCE, 2014).
In order to analyze Sweden’s terrorism prevention, it is necessary to first analyze the causes and factors that make people move towards violent Islamist extremism. Therefore, my first empirical study analyzes the socio-economic factors in major suburban areas in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Örebro and Malmö with concentrated Muslim populations where most of Swedish IS fighters come from. I will, therefore, examine the objective factors possibly causing a Swedish young Muslim immigrant and/or a second generation Muslim immigrant to become alienated, such that he or her embraces violent Islamist extremism.
Then, after identifying the causes that create alienating environment, I will go through Sweden’s counter-terrorism and terrorism prevention policy, practice and institutional design and by content analysis of official documents and the activities of National Coordinator against Violent Extremism as the main actor in terrorism prevention, I will examine to what extent has
Swedish terrorism prevention policy and practice been able to tackle root causes in order to prevent terrorism?
Finally, building on the findings from various methods used in the thesis, and by analyzing the results of a questionnaire answered by civil servants whose task is to coordinate terrorism prevention activities in municipalities I address a final key question: What accounts for the gap between the specified potential causes of terrorism and the Swedish terrorism prevention policy design?
1.2 The Importance of Study: Stagnation in Terrorism Research
Recent terrorist attacks in various European cities alongside with the growth in number of EU citizens who have traveled abroad to fight for Islamic State have once again grasped the attention of politicians and researchers in order to reconsider the issue of counter-terrorism and terrorism prevention. To some extent, the situation is similar to the post 9/11 era when everyone was seeking solutions to prevent further attacks.
Terrorism and counter-terrorism as a research area is not completely new and of course didn’t emerge after 9/11 but at that point it became a hotspot for academics and politicians’ concerns.
Despite much funding and investments in the field, counter-terrorism and especially terrorism prevention is still relatively underdeveloped both in thought and practice.
As Mark Sageman (2014) argues, we witness stagnation in terrorism research for two principal reasons. First, as Sageman illustrates, governments heavily invest in the field to promote academic explanations over the question but at the same time key agencies and organizations like the police and secret services are reluctant to share information and data necessary for the production of reliable materials. This is to some extent understandable considering the secrecy of the matter but the result is that scholars try to analyze the question without actually accessing what they need. Consequently, the theoretical aspect of terrorism research is relatively thick and the empirical aspect is relatively thin.
Since the intelligence communities do not want to share their material with university researchers, they try to train their own experts and Sageman after many years of working for U.S intelligence community concludes that those experts trained by secret services access data but lack sufficient theoretical understanding and methodological awareness. Moreover, academics have a more theoretical understanding but are not able to apply it so well as they
often lack data (Sageman, 2014: 570). This leads academia to a kind of false generalization because the theoretical contemplations are not really based on actual empirical data about terrorism (Newman, 2006: 755). This situation, however, is not new and over three decades ago Martha Crenshaw mentioned it as the “initial obstacle to identification of propitious circumstances for terrorism” (1981: 381).
The second argument emphasizes that there is a crisis of knowledge in the field not only due to the lack of data but also because the “faulty epistemology” that is usually pursued (Jackson, 2015: 34). As Zulaika explains the epistemological crisis of terrorism and counter-terrorism can be characterized by “the perversion of temporality, the logic of taboo, non-hypothetical knowledge, secret information, the passion for expert ignorance, mystical causation and dual sovereignty” (Zulaika, 2009). To some extent, the aforementioned problem occurs because terrorism research is politicized and is affected by propaganda, therefore, some scholars side with the mainstream media and emphasize the factors that are not important and turn a blind eye to factors that are actually significant. The role of Islam, for example, is one of the factors that have been extremely overemphasized and instead the socio-economic factors that can be seen as root causes have been for many years downplayed. Consequently, “propositions about terrorism lack logical comparability, specification of the relationship of variables to each other, and a rank-ordering of variables in terms of explanatory power” (Crenshaw, 1981: 380).
2. Background
The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, changed the world in many ways. This incident at the dawn of 21st Century enormously affected the international politics and its effects in the attitude of states towards terrorism can still be traced, hence, it is unavoidable to mention 9/11 when writing about terrorism. Despite the influence associated with this U.S.-centered event, Sweden as an EU member is also profoundly affected by EU policies. Therefore, in this background section first I briefly explain how 9/11 and the War on Terror discourse set the Swedish agenda for at least a decade. Then by analyzing EU counter-terrorism strategy, I try to show how Sweden’s counter-terrorism strategy can be defined within the broader EU context.
2.1 9/11 and War on Terror
After 9/11, counter-terrorism efforts were mostly focused on military campaigns in the Middle East and heavy surveillance of Muslims’ communities in the US and Europe as terrorism was defined as an exogenous threat. This approach had a special emphasis on Islam as a source of terrorism and for at least a decade after 9/11, the war on terror was the dominant approach in fighting terrorism (Barber, 2003; Chomsky, 2001; Zinn, 2002).
In his book 9/11, Noam Chomsky argues that the security crisis of 9/11 represented a dramatic change because “for the first time, the guns have been directed the other way” (Chomsky, 2001:
12). By this, he means that a subset of the people who were conquered by western countries in the past now are taking revenge. Regardless of one’s political position, however, Chomsky is right at this point that 9/11 exposed the vulnerability of the West by showing that it could be attacked on the home front. He also reasons that the direct effect of these terrorist activities was more militarization and securitization of the civilian realm by imposing more surveillance measures and restricting individuals’ rights (Chomsky, 2001: 19). In his view, these responses to terrorism would undermine democracy (a paradoxical outcome) because a less democratic society is a better environment for the spread of terrorism. Chomsky believes that for the west to stop terrorism it is better not to simply demonize the others, but rather seek “to understand what lies behind major atrocities” (Chomsky, 2001: 37) by recognizing their own role and distinguishing the root causes. In this context, Chomsky means that Western countries should solve the problems internally by, for example, changing their foreign policy or conducting more appropriate social policies in order to achieve more equal societies with less discrimination.
Benjamin Barber’s book, Fear’s Empire has a similar standpoint to Chomsky’s. By using an historical perspective, he criticizes the concept of preventive war and argues that the U.S-Bush administration had a defective understanding of interdependence in a globalized world when it thought that by bombing it could destroy terrorism and by exporting U.S institutions it was possible to create democracy and preserve human rights in other societies (Barber, 2003: 17- 18). Barber indicates that “fear is terrorism’s only weapon, but fear is a far more potent weapon against those who live in hope and prosperity than those who live in despair with nothing to lose” (2003: 21). Then he argues that by preventive war abroad and restricting individuals’
liberties at home, the U.S unconsciously helps to develop the fear’s empire that terrorists try to create (2003: 42). The militarization of foreign affairs is also a side effect of this strategy, which in turn, diminishes the other alternatives to have opportunity showing their strength to solve the problem (Barber, 2003: 92). He discusses that this understanding of preventive war comes from American exceptionalist reasoning in which the U.S is seen as morally unique. Therefore, American politicians think they have a right to preventive self-defense while they deny the same right for others (Barber, 2003: 100).
After exposing that preventive war is wholly inadequate to fight against terrorism, Barber suggests that preventive democracy is a more reliable solution because “democracy undoes the conditions that allow terrorism to flourish…Unlike counterstate preventive war, it addresses terrorism directly and cannot be twisted terrorism’s purposes” (Barber, 2003: 201). In an explanation, however, he clarifies that by democracy he doesn’t mean merely election and majority rule but a society in which people are not only passive spectators rather active citizens.
Barber concludes that this is the only way to overcome the fear’s empire.
In Terrorism and War, Howard Zinn (2002) also argues that the war on terror is a result of impatience, lack of knowledge about the nature of terrorism and nonstrategic thinking. That is why in most of the cases, he explains, the U.S unconscious concludes that “you must do something, therefore bomb” (Zinn, 2002: 10). After 9/11, U.S military expenditures drastically increased in order to tackle the war on terror but as Zinn sees, it is the wrong approach because it is impossible to fight an asymmetric threat by classical military means. In his view, terrorism is more of a social problem than a military problem and social problems essentially require long-term strategies but due to the impatience and do-it-fast attitude, the U.S politicians fail to plan long-term solutions (Zinn, 2002: 26,62).
2.2 Counter-terrorism in the EU
Europe is currently witnessing a new trend in terrorism; namely homegrown terrorism. After 9/11 the focus of intelligence services was on preventing terrorists from entering EU’s borders, but the emergence of IS in Iraq/Syria drastically changed the situation since some thousands from EU countries traveled to Iraq/Syria to join IS as foreign fighters. According to the International Centre for Counter-terrorism, since the escalation of conflict in Syria in 2011 around 3,922 (a minimum estimates) to 5000 (a maximum estimates) individuals from EU countries joined IS. Already 30% of them have returned to their home countries, so the risk of terrorist incidents in Europe is believed to have been raised (Van Ginkel, B., and E. Entenmann, 2016).
In the aftermath of 9/11 and especially after the Madrid and London bombings, the EU reached a framework so called Counter-terrorism Strategy and entitled Europol1, Eurojust2, INTCEN3 and Frontex4 to tackle the fight against terrorism (Den Boer 2015; Rhinard 2008). As it will be discussed later in theory section the war on terror discourse framed terrorism as an exogenous problem that should be countered abroad, and consequently EU counter-terrorism strategy and most of European states’ strategies also followed this logic and adjusted their policies according to this understanding of terrorism.
For the EU as a project of peace and security, providing a high level of safety for its citizens is a priority (Art. 29 of the Maastricht Treaty). Moreover, according to the European Security Strategy, old threats such as large-scale invasions to national territories of EU countries are unlikely and they have been replaced by new threats that are “more diverse, less visible and less predictable” (Council, 2003: 3). The Internal Security Strategy for the European Union defines terrorism as one of the main challenges for the internal security of the union (Council, 2010). This shows that EU is highly concerned about terrorism but the problem is that because of the process of globalization and the EU’s its own internal policies (such as freedom of movement), terrorism has become more complex and complicated. Therefore, fighting terrorism demands an efficient apparatus with powerful legal backing. EU counter-terrorism strategy and its respective institutions have provided a forum for states to exchange information
1The European Union’s law enforcement agency; https://www.europol.europa.eu
2The European Union's Judicial Cooperation Unit; http://www.eurojust.europa.eu/Pages/home.aspx
3The EU Intelligence Analysis Centre; http://eu-un.europa.eu/factsheet-on-eu-intelligence-analyses-center-intcen/
4European Border and Coast Guard Agency; http://frontex.europa.eu
and intelligence regarding terrorism but they lack operational power since states hold it for themselves. As a result, some scholars downplay EU counter-terrorism strategy and argue that it may seem functional on paper but in practice, it is not efficient (Bures, 2011; Bossong, 2013).
Fighting terrorism in the EU is by nature different from the U.S since the later is a state with national law, rules, regulations, and policies while EU is an intergovernmental organization that acts as an umbrella over member-states. Although the Lisbon treaty gave more power to EU’s bodies, it is still the responsibility of single states to tackle problems and EU counter-terrorism strategy specifies that counter-terrorism is the responsibility of states (Council, 2005).
Nevertheless, the EU’s counter-terrorism strategy consists of four main pillars which are Prevention, Protect, Pursue and Respond. This categorization can be found in a single country’s strategy as well (in section 6 I will compare the EU’s strategy to the one of Sweden in detail).
When looking at the institutions (EUROPOL, EUROJUST, INTCEN, FRONTEX) that are designated to conduct counter-terrorism strategy, one gets the impression that the efforts are focused on police work, intelligence activities, restricted visa-granting regulations and stronger border-control. Yet prevention is heavily neglected, vague and unspecified; it is usually equal to surveillance in order to discover terrorist cells and neutralize them before taking actions. This interpretation of prevention has lead European countries to impose heavy surveillance on neighborhoods in which Muslim immigrants live. This approach is dangerous since it can lead to the construction of suspect communities (Vermeulen, 2014).
After conducting field studies in London, Amsterdam and Berlin, Vermeulen concluded that this counter-terrorism strategy has reverse effects and can possibly contribute to the growth of terrorism since it results in more exclusion, marginalization, and stigmatization because the entire Muslim community is treated differently from the rest of the society (Vermeulen, 2014:
287-288). Although neither the EU nor nation-states explicitly identify homegrown terrorism as a religious (Islamic) problem, creating suspect communities shows that they are unconsciously deploying this approach (Vermeulen, 2014: 292). Preventing terrorism in a manner of containment is not sufficient because even under strict surveillance and restricted social status, terrorist networks are able to reconstitute themselves (Newman, 2006).
3. Theoretical framework and Literature Review
3.1 Introduction
In the previous section, the main-stream approach to counter-terrorism was quickly explained and it was argued that counter-terrorism and preventive policies conducted both at the EU and nation-state levels appear to be inadequate since they traditionally do not consider prevention seriously. Prevention requires more long-term and deeper strategies because as it will be discussed, tendencies towards violent Islamist extremism are a result of accumulation of socio- economic problems.
As in most cases the terrorists and IS European fighters were either born or raised in European countries, they cannot be considered simply as exogenous problems but they are also partially an endogenous problem. Therefore, a well-established counter-terrorism strategy and terrorism prevention approach demands a careful examination of internal factors in European societies that lead individuals towards terrorist activities and violent extremism. This framework, then, ties the issue of counter-terrorism to immigration and integration because some empirical studies show that most of the homegrown terrorists are individuals with an immigrant background who seem to have difficulties in integrating into societies (Pisoiu, 2013; Piazza, 2009; Maynard, 2014).
3.2 Root Causes of Terrorism
The terrorist attacks associated with 9/11 resulted in a securitization of Muslim immigrants and enhanced the discourse of Blame it on Islam (Messina, 2007; Sageman, 2014). Undoubtedly the role of Wahhabism and Jihadism as ideologies behind violent Islamist extremism shouldn’t be dismissed but their role needs to be carefully examined. When these factors are regarded as the sole cause of terrorism and violent extremism, then this omits central causes. Therefore, statements such as “when one has been nursed on the mother’s milk of hatred and bitterness, the need for vengeance is bred in the bone” (Post, 2007: 37) don’t help us to understand the problem but rather encourage securitization which, in turn, create further complications (Vermeulen, 2014). Having this view leads authorities to take aim at Islamic population as a whole and as earlier discussed ends up creating suspect communities (Hörnqvist and Flyghed, 2012).
Another approach, the so called “root causes of terrorism”, argues that the “blame it on Islam”
approach is just a simplification of the homegrown terrorism and violent Islamist extremism in Europe. This approach doesn’t reject the role of Jihadism, but argues that Islam is not a root cause and root causes should be sought in social conditions that individuals with immigrant background experience in their everyday life. This approach offers a complicated multidisciplinary framework by combining international relations, political economy, political sociology and political psychology. By focusing on failed integration as a root cause this approach claims that if European countries can achieve functional integration programs, then terrorism and violent extremism to a great extent can be prevented. The notion of exclusion is a key in this argument because, according to this approach, immigrants are economically, socially and politically excluded from the societies (Newman, 2006). The low level of education and high rate of unemployment are some factors that indicate the exclusion of immigrants and therefore some see immigrants as an “internal other” inside western societies (Herring and Stokes, 2011). The root causes approach also tries to identify a causal relationship between underlying economic, political and social conditions and the growth of terrorism (Newman, 2006).
Root causes, therefore, both objectively and subjectively can radicalize young Muslim immigrants who are excluded from society. The term “radicalization” is the standard expression most scholars use to explain the process that distinguishes individuals who join terrorist organizations from the rest in their community. Later in this section, I will argue that this term is not comprehensive and cannot explain exactly why among people who would be influenced by the root causes only a few become terrorists.
There are some other categorizations that indicate more or less the same thing, despite minor differences. These categorizations, interestingly, show that religious or specifically Islam doesn’t play a significant role as a root cause. Instead, many scholars mention the search for meaning. For example, a double sense of non-belonging is strong within the second and third generation of immigrants. They are mainly born and raised in European countries but cannot identify themselves with their elders’ countries since they never lived there and usually cannot even speak the language. Similarly, they can’t identify with the countries that they are officially citizens of, as they are unofficially excluded from them because of various forms of discrimination and socio-economic disadvantages (Dalgaard-Nielsen, 2010: 800).
3.3 Alienation and Dealienation: A Comprehensive Framework to Analyze Violent Islamist Extremism
As noted above, the Root Causes of Terrorism approach is able to explore the factors that smooth the way for violent Islamist extremism. Yet, we need to also examine why only a few of those who are experiencing the root causes choose to actively engage in terrorism. We need a more complicated theoretical framework to understand why an individual decides to commit terrorism and how it can be avoided. In this regard Crenshaw argues:
To develop a framework for the analysis of likely settings for terrorism, we must establish conceptual distinctions among different types of factors. A significant difference exists between preconditions, factors that set the stage for terrorism over the long run, and precipitants, specific events that immediately precede the occurrence of terrorism (1981: 381).
It was argued before that the Root Causes Approach sees violent extremism as a matter of social exclusion and integration problems but in order to broaden the understanding about exclusion and failed integration some philosophical hints are useful.
Jean-Paul Sartre (1968) believes that individuals are able to change the structure by conducting their choices because the structure is contingent. It means that although individuals are shaped by objective structure but through their actions, they can shape the structure as well. In that sense then individuals are not merely passive products of structures (objective reality) but they have the opportunity to create their future and construct possibilities for freedom. Therefore, structure (objective) and agency (individuals-subjective) have a dialectical relationships in which they shape and reshape each other. However, this only happens when individuals use their freedom and subjective choices. But if an individual has a deficient relation to oneself, to others and to the world then s/he is alienated (Jaeggi, 2014: 5). An alienated environment is where individuals find their beings as insignificant, meaningless and impoverished. A place which is not their home, they don’t have any influence over it and they are merely passive objects of the external world (Jaeggi, 2014).
When reading official documents about integration and social inclusion of immigrants one realizes that the dominant approach is to “integrate immigrants into the society.” Yet, it is impossible for governmental agencies, organizations and civil servants to integrate others into a given society because limited integration programs cannot serve huge number of people with such broad differences in background, educational capabilities and professional skills, etc.
(Hills, et al, 2002). Here, there is a danger of alienation in programs that are supposed to prevent
alienation because it is possible that individuals be forced to adopt a fixed identity or live in accordance with the dictates of others (Rae, 2011: 40-41). In other words, the programs don’t really develop the capacities of immigrant communities in economic terms. Social inclusion and integration should instead be thought as a dynamic, non-linear process in which individuals are able to choose a set of programs and activities that fit them and try to change their situation on their own. The idea is to expand the frontier of what Sartre called “contingency”.5
Seymour Melman (2001) explored the idea that a root cause of terrorism was the terrorists’
alienation, i.e. their relatively lack of power and their attempt to secure power, even vicariously, i.e. through promises of rewards in the afterlife or rewards to their relatives after martyrdom (Feldman, 2017). Building on the work of Lawrence Cohen at Columbia University, Melman also theorized how de-alienation occurred, i.e. the individual cut off from various resources can gain power by developing various capacities such as by creating various organizations and associated networks through trade unions, cooperatives and the like (Melman, 2001).
Based on what has been explained, then it can be said that alienation has three major components which are: 1) powerlessness, 2) social isolation and 3) meaninglessness (Dean, 1961). Therefore, alienation takes both objective and subjective factors into account since they relate to each other as Sartre explained.
These three components of alienation can be shortly defined as:
• Powerlessness: It is a well-known concept thanks to Karl Marx. Although Marx used this term to discuss workers’ separation from effective control over means of production (Marcuse, 1941), it can be expanded to other aspects of society as well. Powerlessness has a close relation to inequality in societies. Those who are experiencing inequality, injustice and have less opportunity to develop their potentials are disempowered as subjects (Jaeggi, 2014: 23) therefor unemployed people and those who lack meaningful jobs, whose education level is low are more likely to be alienated.
• Social isolation: It simply means separation from the rest of society. It’s thus important to keep in mind that social isolation doesn’t mean the loss of community but rather the
5 A person is free “to choose the meaning of his world and free to try to actually change his world. Thus, we find the dialectical reciprocity pointed to earlier: the individual finds himself in a specific historical situation with specific structures and possibilities that shape and constrain his practical freedom. It is only by overcoming the constraining pressures of his social world in the form of objective structures, social norms, and the consequences of other’s actions, that the individual is able to actually and practically express himself in the world” (Rae, 2011: 95).
incapacity to establish meaningful relations to others and to the society (Jaeggi, 2014:
219). In this regard, Sartre argues that consciousness of the individual is essentially embedded in the social situation and the way one relates itself to others through membership and involvement in various different groups is a good measure to scale one’s isolation from the society (Rae, 2011: 91).
• Meaninglessness: It is “a situation in which the social norms regulating individual conduct have broken down or are no longer effective as rules for behavior” (Seeman, 1959: 787). Accordingly, alienation is tied to the problem of a loss of meaning; an alienated life is one that has become impoverished or meaningless, but it is a meaninglessness that is intertwined with powerlessness and impotence (Jaeggi, 2014:
22). That is why alienated people often face identity crisis and since norms and rules of society are meaningless for them they are in conflict with authorities and usually commit petty crimes.6
All in one we can argue that “alienation is typically associated with isolation, hopelessness, powerlessness, loss, anxiety, frustration, despair, and/or loneliness. These sensations arise because the individual explicitly perceives and experiences some sort of disconnection between his perception of what/who he is and what/who he thinks he should be” (Rae, 2011: 1-2). In his book Why Men Rebel, Robert Gurr coined the term “relative deprivation” in order to analyze violent extremism. He argues that relative deprivation is the tension between one’s actual state of being and what one feels or perceives one deserves (Gurr, 1970: 25). Therefore, violent extremism and the act of terrorism occurs when the difference between an individual’s actual socio-economic situation and what s/he perceives doesn’t comply with one another.
3.3.1 Alienation and Electoral Turnout
It was discussed that powerlessness, social isolation, and meaninglessness lead to alienation from the society one lives in. The opposite to alienation is the possibility of a multidimensional access to social, economical and political aspects of the society in its broadest sense. Therefore, social inclusion is the prerequisite to well-being of both individuals and society as a whole (Bevalander and Pendakur, 2010: 74).
But how is it possible to measure that someone is isolated from the society and social reality that one lives in? There are theories indicating that alienation and social isolation have a direct
6The role of socio-economic factors like unemployment and poverty in committing crime shouldn’t be dismissed.
relation to the likelihood of one’s participation in the political sphere meaning that the more one is integrated into the society the more likely one participates in elections. Therefore, participation in elections can be taken as a sign of social belonging to the society. Putting it in our theoretical context then we can conclude that if an individual is considered as alienated, subsequently, that person would be lees likely to vote in elections (Byrne, 2005). Immigrants and foreign born traditionally vote less compared to native/born citizens but there are studies proving that various factors like education, employment, income, housing tenure, etc. can increase or decrease the probability of voting among people with foreign background (Bäck and Gilljam, 2006; Bevalander and Pendakur, 2010).
People vote when they think 1) they are part of the society, and 2) they realize that their votes can affect the decision-making process. Therefore, electoral turnout is a good measure for social inclusion since in European countries like Sweden it is free, voluntary and doesn’t have any negative consequence if one doesn’t participate (Hills, et al, 2002; Toye and Infanti, 2004;
Bevalander and Pendakur, 2010).
3.4 Network Theory
All mentioned above can make individuals a fertile ground prone to violent extremism, yet compared to the whole population who experience social exclusion and alienation only relatively a few show a tendency to violent Islamist extremism.
For committing an act of terrorism and/or joining violent extremist groups two important factors are necessary beyond alienating social conditions: 1) being exposed to extremist propaganda and violent extremist ideologies (in our case IS propaganda and Jihadism), and 2) a social network in which violent extremism has some grounds. In this study, I won’t analyze the role of propaganda as there are plenty of studies analyzing Jihadism and IS propaganda in social media (Gustafsson, 2015; Ali, 2015; Atwan, 2015).
Regarding the social network, it should be stated that two major approaches to recruitment can be identified. The first one asserts that recruitment happens because Islamist militant groups have a dynamic and systematic recruitment system. Using a top-down framework, they actively targeting individuals who seem to be prepared to join violent extremist groups. This mainly is the case when analyzing older Islamist groups like Al-Qaida, Hezbollah, etc. (Dalgaard- Nielsen, 2010: 798).
The second approach considers recruiting to terrorist and violent extremist groups as a bottom- up, non-systematic process. This view argues that there is no such thing as an active recruitment. Sageman, by using network theory, presented the idea of “bunches of guys”. He believes that radicalization and recruitment to violent extremist groups are usually a gradual rhetorical escalation within groups of friends (Dalgaard-Nielsen, 2010: 804) and is tied to a
“multitude of informal local groups trying to emulate their predecessors by conceiving and executing operations from the bottom up” (Sageman, 2008: vii).
According to Sageman, these people usually start making contacts with terrorist groups when they are already radicalized and hold violent ideas. In some cases, individuals don’t make contacts at all and act on their own. This group is known as “lone wolves” who are inspired by violent extremist ideologies through their propaganda but don’t have any significant contacts with organizations (Sageman, 2004; Sageman, 2008). Network theory considers individuals as fully embedded in their environment, therefore, builds the analysis from the ground up looking at the relationships between individuals. The point is that people don’t join terrorist organizations and violent extremist groups by relying upon strangers. The situation is completely the opposite—people get encouraged and motivated by those who know for a long time and trust; mainly family members and friends (Sageman, 2008: 23-24).
Accepting the ideas of Sageman, Edwin Bakker studied the profile of 200 individuals who were involved in terrorist activities in Europe. He concluded that for most of them radicalization was a bottom-up process happening in the personal network of friends in their residential cities and neither external factors nor active recruitment by terrorist groups was involved (Bakker, 2006:
52). Moreover, it should be kept in mind that alienation doesn’t occur in a mechanical, deterministic way and it is impossible to identify relevant components in a visibly distinct order (Pisoiu, 2013: 250).
3.5 Swedish IS fighters
The aim of this sub-section is to apply the theoretical framework of the study by reviewing the existing literature on Swedish foreign fighters to initially find out if the theory can later be applied in empirical sections of the thesis. If so, then the existing academic work can be used as a good departure point and instead of repeating what already has been said I will build up on other academics’ works and contribute to the research field.
Regardless of the severity of the situation, the number of academic articles and publications analyzing the violent Islamist extremism in Sweden and Swedish IS fighters are surprisingly low. There are some journalistic accounts like, Jihad: Swedes in the Islamic Terror Networks (2013)7 and Swedish IS fighters (2016)8 that explain violent Islamist extremism in Sweden.
There are also more general books like Extremists: A story about political violence in Sweden (2012)9 and The Swedish hatred: a story about our time (2016)10 that explain how and why different extremist movements spread out in Sweden.
The number of academic pieces is even more restricted. The major contribution is from researchers at the Center for Asymmetric Threat Studies (CATS) at the Swedish Defence University. They have published three reports which are Prevention of Violent Extremism at Local Level (Ranstorp et al., 2015)11, Violent Islamic extremism and social media (Gustafsson, 2015)12 and a recently published report Swedish Foreign Fighters in Syria and Iraq (Gustafsson and Ronstorp, 2017).13 There is also another report published by Segerstedinstitutet at Gothenburg university called Mellan det angelägna och det svårfångade14 (Mattson et al., 2016). This study, based on interviewing a number of civil servants that work in the field, is useful for understanding how different actors work to prevent violent Islamist extremism.
The newly published report Swedish Foreign Fighters in Syria and Iraq (Gustafsson and Ronstorp, 2017) is the most important piece since it analyzes data on 267 Swedish IS fighters that were provided by Sweden’s secret service (SÄPO) exclusively to them which is unprecedented. That makes this report unique because the analysis is based on reliable hard facts directly from the secret service and the sample (267) is very close to the total number of Swedish IS fighters, although the data contains only statistics and more general information (approximately 300).15
This report gives a clear idea about time of travel, age, gender, geographical concentration, citizenship and country of origin, average time spent in the conflict area, numbers of individuals
7Svenskarna i De Islamistiska Terrornätverken.
8Svenska IS-krigare.
9Extremister: En berättelse om politiska våldsverkare i Sverige.
10Det Svenska Hatet: en berättelse om vår tid.
11Förebyggande av Våldsbejakande Extremism på Local Nivå.
12Våldsbejakande Islamistisk Extremism och Sociala Medier.
13The report was originally written in English.
14I couldn’t find an appropriate translation for this title, therefore, used the original title in Swedish.
15There is no exact number however SÄPO’s estimation is around 300 people.
killed, number of returnees, number of fighters remaining in the conflict area, social media activities, and the financing of foreign fighters (ibid: 5). The weakness of this report is that important factors like education level, employment status and income rate of those foreign fighters are missed but in the next section I use data about geographical distribution provided by this report as an indicator to find out how living in some specific areas can play a role in alienating individuals.
These 267 individuals traveled to Syria or Iraq between June 2012 and September 2016; 106 of them (40 percent) have returned to Sweden, while 112 (42 percent) are still in Syria or Iraq. A total of 49 (18 percent) individuals were estimated to have died in the conflict (ibid: 75).
3.5.1 Age and Gender Distribution
The average age of Swedish IS fighters at the time of first travel to Syria/Iraq was 26, however, 78% were under 29. There are a few older individuals who make the average a bit higher although the majority is extremely young. Of the total fighters, 76 percent were men and 24 were women. Separating the average age of men and women then the average age for men was still 26 while the average for women was 25.
Figure 1: The age distribution at time of first travel to Syria/Iraq
Source: Gustafsson and Ronstorp, 2017: 81.
3.5.2 The average years of living in Sweden
Among the fighters studied, 75 percent had Swedish citizenships and 34 percent were born in Sweden. The average age of immigration to Sweden is 16.
Figure 2: The age distribution of IS foreign fighters when immigrating to Sweden
Source: Gustafsson and Ronstorp, 2017: 94-95.
3.5.3 Crime Background
There is no definite data about the criminal background of Swedish IS fighters. According to national police’s intelligence unit, however, many of them have previously committed crimes such as theft, narcotics, weapons crime, and assault etc. (Sverige Radio, 2016). Magnus Sandelin in his book Swedish IS fighters (2016) examined the profiles of 70 individuals and found out that about one-third of them had been convicted of crimes. Statements from intelligence agencies and journalistic accounts both prove that criminality is a common setting in this context (Sandelin 2016; Gustafsson and Ronstorp 2017).
3.5.4 Geographical distribution
Sweden is divided into 21 counties and 290 municipalities. The majority (80%) of Swedish IS fighters come from four counties which are Stockholm, Västra Götaland16, Skåne17, and Örebro.
It is extremely important to know that the regional distribution in each county is not even and Swedish IS fighters in each area come from certain neighborhoods with a concentrated immigrant population. In 2015, the Swedish Police published a report about the criminal network in Sweden and identified 53 deprived areas and 15 of those were recognized as particularly exposed areas (Polisen, 2015). The majority (71%) come from those few exposed neighborhoods that are characterized by a high level of criminality, poverty and high unemployment rates, social stigmatization, and cramped housing conditions (Gustafsson and
16Gothenburg is the capital of Västra Götaland.
17 Malmö is the capital of Skåne
Ronstorp, 2017:84-105). Even within those particularly exposed areas, some areas contributed more (see Table 1). It is worth noticing that most of youth riots that have happened in Sweden in the past ten years, were mostly in these areas (Polisen, 2015).
Figure 3: The amount of Swedish IS fighters from different counties
Source: Gustafsson and Ronstorp, 2017: 82-83.
Table 1: Four cities contributing most to IS fighters
City Particularly Exposed Areas with Most IS Fighters
Örebro Vivalla18
Gothenburg Angered (Bergsjön, Hammarkullen, Gårdsten, Lövgärdet)
Stockholm Husby, Rinkeby/Tensta
Malmö Rosengård
Source: Author based on Polisen, 2015; Gustafsson and Ronstorp, 2017.
3.5.5 Recruited by Family Members and Friends
The reason why concentration is in just a few areas can partially be explained by network theory. In most cases in the aforementioned areas individuals were recruited by their close friends and relatives, but there was not such active recruitment by IS. Some key persons inspired by IS propaganda started to make contacts with IS members in Iraq and Syria and then traveled there to join them. After that they tried to encourage and provoke their friends and relatives to join IS through social media mainly using Facebook (Gustafsson and Ronstorp, 2017; Sandelin, 2016; Gustafsson 2015).
18Considering per capita Vivalla had the most IS fighters.
3.6 Summary
In this section, I tried to analyze Swedish IS fighter’s phenomena by applying alienation and network theories. I argued that living in an alienating environment has a crucial role in tendencies towards violent extremism. Additionally, there are two determinative factors why only a few among a huge number who live in alienating environments decide to join terrorist groups. First, they are exposed to propaganda. Second, they participate in an inappropriate social network in which at least one person is a supporter of violent extremism. The existing literature about Swedish IS fighters is summarized in as Figure 4, below.
Figure 4: The multilayered process of engaging in violent Islamist extremism
Source: Author based on Sageman, 2008; Rae, 2011; Jaeggi, 2014; Gustafsson 2015; Gustafsson and Ronstorp, 2017.
Inappropriate social network
Being Exposed to propaganda Living in alienating environment
4. Methodology
4.1 Levels of Analysis
Three different levels of analysis can be distinguished when analyzing terrorism and counter- terrorism:
• Micro level: biographical analysis of individuals
• Meso level: social context of specific areas
• Macro level: overarching socio-economic conditions at national level
Each level has its own analytical advantages and disadvantages. The micro level is useful when analyzing a specific case to understand why exactly an individual committed an act of terrorism.
The difficulties of this approach are: 1) accessing those individuals is in most cases impossible since intelligence agencies and judiciaries won’t usually permit researchers to interview them;
2) for getting the best result researchers need to have knowledge in clinical psychology (Sageman, 2008: 16). For aforementioned reasons I will not analyze the micro level.
The meso level is useful to understand why violent Islamist extremism escalated in some particular areas. I will, therefore, analyze the socio-economic conditions in four chosen particularly exposed areas in Sweden which are Husby-Rinkeby-Tensta in Stockholm, Angered in Gothenburg, Vivalla in Örebro and Rosengård in Malmö. According to the Swedish secret service, these are the areas where the majority of Swedish IS fighters came from. Various factors such as education level, unemployment, income rate and eventually electoral participation in these areas will be analyzed.
The macro level is another level of analysis that will be used in this study. Broad socio- economic explanations can form a genuine understanding of the wider social situation at the national level. This type of analysis sees society as a system and is useful to understand what kind of structure encourages and facilitates violent extremism. Since I use the meso level as well, then, I will compare all the factors in aforementioned areas with ones at the national level to find out how various socio-economic factors in the meso level deviate from the macro level.
C. Wright Mills in his book The Sociological Imagination (1959) argues that for understanding social phenomena it is necessary to consider individuals (biography) in both a social and historical context and understand the interplay between them. Therefore, an ideal research
would be the one that could connect the dots between micro (individual), meso (regional) and macro (national) levels19. This project is obviously much bigger than a master’s thesis, nonetheless, as explained above I skip micro level due to practical matters and analyze only two different levels which are sufficient enough considering the limitation of a master’s thesis.
The factors and measures drawn from the theoretical framework are summarized in Table 2.
Meaninglessness and its measure can be analyzed mainly at the micro level and require set of methods like interviewing individuals engaged in violent extremism and/or interviewing people who live in exposed areas that were not used in this thesis. Therefore, I consciously excluded meaninglessness from this study.
Table 2: The theoretical framework of the study
Theory Factors Measures
Alienation Powerlessness -Education level
-Unemployment -Income rate
Social Isolation -Electoral Participation -Effects of surveillance -Sense of non-belonging to society
Meaninglessness -Identity crisis
Source: Author based on Sartre, 1968; Rae, 2011 and Jaeggi, 2014.
Having two different levels of analysis necessarily requires using various research methods. I now briefly discuss what methods I will use and what are the sources of data for each method.
4.2 Statistical Analysis
Different statistics on the population with foreign background, unemployment, education level, income rate and electoral turnout both at the local and national levels will be used in order to compare the socio-economic situations of the designated neighborhoods to what appears at the national level. For finding relevant and reliable statistics for national level I used Statistics Sweden (SCB) which is the governmental agency responsible for producing statistics, and for statistics at local level I used each municipalities’ database. And eventually, for statistics about electoral turnout, I used the Election Authority’s database.20
19Levels of analysis can be categorized in other ways with regard to the nature of the topic. For instance, Kenneth Waltz identifies three levels which are: 1) the individual, 2) the state and 3) the system (Waltz, 1959).
20Statistiska Centralbyrån: http://www.scb.se, Stockholm municipality: http://statistik.stockholm.se, Örebro municipality:
http://www.orebro.se/kommun--politik/fakta-statistik--undersokningar.html, Malmö municipality: http://malmo.se/Kommun--politik/Fakta- och-statistik.html, Gothenburg municipality: http://statistik.goteborg.se, Valmyndigheten: www.val.se
Gathering data for the macro level was easy since clear-cut data was available on Statistics Sweden’s database. For analyzing data for the meso level in most cases I had to calculate data and produce desired statistics myself.21 The problem was even more significant for electoral turnout since each area itself had several voting places and for having more accurate data I had to calculate data from those voting places that were in intended areas. I reviewed the statistics several times for eventual errors and miscalculations, and under these reviews found and corrected some minor errors.
4.3 Content Analysis
I will conduct a content analysis of Sweden’s official documents about counter-terrorism and terrorism prevention. All documents are available online and can be downloaded from the Government22, The National Coordinator Against Violent Extremism23, the Security Service24, and the police.25 The documents analyzed are described in Table 3.26 Content analysis of these documents helps me to find a clear understanding of Sweden’s counter-terrorism and terrorism prevention policy, practice, and institutional design and by comparing the result gained from this method to the results from other methods I will hopefully be able to pinpoint the shortages of Sweden’s terrorism prevention design (Bowen, 2009). The institutional design of Swedish terrorism prevention policy can be explicated by analyzing the discourse corresponding to the factors and measures explained in Table 2. Selected documents are basically all main documents published by government and the National Coordinator that define and draw the bigger framework for counter-terrorism and terrorism prevention activities in Sweden. Other agencies have other documents that were not included in this study because they didn’t have any added value beyond chosen documents. For example, the security service has an annual yearbook, in which a specific chapter is about terrorism. The reason that these yearbooks weren’t analyzed is that they only included a report over counter-terrorism activities conduced by the secret service and didn’t have any strategic importance. These yearbooks could be useful, if the aim of this study was, for instance, to analyze activities of the secret service.
21 Husby-Rinkeby-Tensta (Stockholm) is three different areas, Rosengård (Malmö) contains four areas and Angered (Gothenburg) contains five different areas.
22http://www.regeringen.se
23http://www.samordnarenmotextremism.se 24http://www.sakerhetspolisen.se
25https://polisen.se
26 There were English versions of three documents (Action plan to safeguard democracy against violence- promoting extremism (2011);
Sweden's national counter-terrorism strategy (2012) and Swedish counter-terrorism strategy (2015)).
Table 3: Selected documents
The Agency Documents
The Government -Action plan to safeguard democracy against violence- promoting extremism (2011)
-Sweden's national counter-terrorism strategy (2012) -When We Care (2013)
-Swedish counter-terrorism strategy (2015)
-Protect Democracy Against Violent Extremism: National Coordination and municipalities responsibility (2016)
The National Coordinator against Violent Extremism
-National Strategy against Violent Extremism (2016) -Activity Report (2016)
-Situational Awareness (2016) -Situational Awareness (2017)
The Security Service -Violent Islamist Extremism in Sweden (2010)
The Police -Social Risks, Collective Abilities and Undesirable Events (2015)
4.4 Questionnaire
Terrorism prevention is a very complex issue, therefore, having knowledge and expertise of people who somehow work in the field is useful to achieve a better comprehension of Sweden’s terrorism prevention work, identify its shortages and offer some suggestion for improvement.
Therefore, results from a questionnaire can be seen as supplementary data that enhance the findings of other methods (Bailey, 1987; Fairclough, 1992).
I used an online Google form to conduct the questionnaire and the target population was civil servants in all municipalities in Sweden whose work is to coordinate activities related to terrorism prevention.
As I explain later, after the establishment of the National Coordinator against Violent Extremism in 2014, the coordinator required all 290 municipalities in Sweden to designate a special person to coordinate all the preventive works in the municipality. The Staff at the National Coordinator office kindly provided me with a list that included the names and email addresses of local coordinator in all 290 municipalities. After sending email containing the
questionnaire link I realized that 18 addresses were faulty and couldn’t reach the destinations, Therefore the total amount that actually received the email is 272 persons. It means that the questionnaire sample (272) is 93.8% of the population (290) which is a great amount.
Total of 85 persons filled in the questionnaire and that makes the response rate to the questionnaire 31.2%, which is good considering the sensitivity of the topic.
I sent the email on June 25,2017 and it was open for responses until August 11, 2017 so the recipients had more than a month to answer the questions. After sending the email I received autoreply emails from 79 persons indicating that they were on summer vacations, 12 persons replied and said they didn’t have enough knowledge to answer the questions, and 9 said that they don’t participate in student surveys. These people weren’t of course omitted from the total amount.
5. Particularly Exposed Areas: Daily Life as a Process of Alienation
5.1 Introduction
The theoretical framework and literature review showed that living in so called “particularly exposed areas” play a significant role in the process of alienation and prepare the setting and root causes to violent Islamist extremism and joining IS. In this section, I try to analyze various socio-economic factors in particularly exposed areas and by comparing data representing these factors to relevant national data try to find out how data attached to these factors deviate from the average level in Sweden.
As noted in the literature review, some specific areas contributed considerably more than the others to IS fighters, therefore, I will analyze four sub-regions (which are known to have most IS fighters) in four different cities in order to offer a more comprehensive picture of the living situation in these areas. In the first step, education level, unemployment rate, and average annual income will be analyzed, afterward electoral participation in these areas will be compared to the average national level.
According to the national police there are 15 particularly exposed areas in Sweden (see Table 4). It is significant that out of those 15 Particularly exposed areas 6 are from Västra Götaland county and 4 are from Stockholm county and 33% and 25% of Swedish IS fighters are respectively from these two counties which make them first and second on the list.
Table 4: 15 Particularly Exposed Areas in Sweden
County Particularly Exposed Areas
Örebro 1.Vivalla
Stockholm 2. Hallunda/Norsborg (Botkyrka)
3.Husby (Stockholm)
4. Rinkeby/Tensta (Stockholm) 5. Ronna/Geneta/Lina (Södertälje)
Västra Götaland 6. Bergsjön (Gothenburg)
7. Biskopsgården (Gothenburg) 8. Gårdsten (Gothenburg) 9. Hammarkullen (Gothenburg) 10. Hjällbo (Gothenburg) 11. Lövgärdet (Gothenburg)
Skåne 12. Rosengård (Malmö) 13. Södra Sofielund (Malmö)
Södra Smålands 14. Araby (Växjö)
Östergötland 15. Skäggetorp (Linköping)
Source: (Polisen, 2015: 29).
Some areas among these 15 particularly exposed areas are known to have the most Swedish IS fighters which are: Vivalla (Örebro), Husby/Rinkeby/Tensta (Stockholm), Angered27 (Gothenburg) and Rosengård28 (Malmö) (see Table 1). These areas have a population of mainly foreign background inhabitants. Table 5 shows how many percent in each area has population with foreign background compared to the national rate. Foreign Background means either born in another country or having both parents born in another country.
Table 5: Population with foreign background 2016
Area Population with foreign
background
Deviation from national rate
Sweden 23.2% 0
Vivalla 80.7% +57.5
Husby/Rinkeby/Tensta 87% +63.8
Rosengård 86% +62.8
Angered 77% +53.8
Source: Author based on data from Statistics Sweden and municipalities’ databases.
5.2 Unemployment
According to Statistics Sweden, the average unemployment rate in 2016 was 6.9 percent which is 0.2 percent lower than the previous year29. Nonetheless, the development is not even for everyone since unemployment decreased only between the so called native swedes while it shows an increase between foreign born individuals. The unemployment rate between native born in 2016 shrank to 4.2 percent and it raised to 22.5 percent between foreign born (see Table 6). This difference shows a severe problem in integration programs for new comers since this
27Angered is a bigger area that contains those particularly exposed areas in Gothenburg named in Table 4.
28Rosengårdis a bigger area that contains those particularly exposed areas in Malmö named in Table 4.
29Different Agencies use different methods. For example, Swedish Public Employment Service announced unemployment rate as 7,6 percent. I use data for unemployment from Statistics Sweden since all the other data for national level used in this thesis are from this agency.
group contains mainly people who came to Sweden as adults with education and experience from another country.
Table 6: Unemployment rate between native Swedes vs. foreign born 2016
Category Unemployment Rate Deviation from national
rate
Sweden 6.9% 0
Native Swedes 4.2% -2.7%
Foreign Born 22.5% +15.6%
Source: Author based on data from Statistics Sweden.
Unemployment rate in the four areas is in average 9.92 percent which is 3.01 percent higher than the national rate (see Table 7). Participants in the questionnaire conducted for this thesis also think the lack of meaningful employment is an important factor explaining why some individuals move towards violent Islamic extremism since 49.5 percent said it is very important, 50.5 percent said it is somewhat important and no one said it is not important (see Figure 5).
Table 7: Unemployment 2016
Areas Unemployment Rate Deviation from national rate
Sweden 6,9% 0
Vivalla 10,4% +3,5%
Husby/Rinkeby/Tensta 8,5% +1,6%
Rosengård 11,7% +4,8%
Angered 9,1% +2.2%
Source: Author based on data from Statistics Sweden and municipalities’ databases.
